Continuity is next-generation casting

Vizbee Continuity is a foundational platform that seamlessly combines the best features and ease of usage of mobile apps with the great viewing experience of TV apps. Technologies like AirPlay and Chromecast can also help users to cast videos from mobile apps to TVs. However, they still essentially treat mobile and TV apps as two different silos. Vizbee truly makes mobile apps and TV apps behave together as one continuous app in a living room.

Benefits

There are many features and benefits of Vizbee Continuity including:

• Universal Casting - Enable universal casting to not just Chromecast but to 100s of millions of other devices.
• 10X Longer Viewing - Convert short-duration mobile viewing to 10X longer viewing on TV devices.
• Native Apps + Receiver Apps - Increase your device reach by using hybrid deployments of your native TV apps and simple Vizbee receiver apps across various devices.
• Automatic TV App Installs - Drive automatic installs of your TV apps from mobile apps.
• Smart Notifications - Leverage your mobile notifications to drive user retention with longer viewing on your TV apps.
• HomeGraph - Get in-depth household device graph to optimize content marketing and advertising campaigns.

See the Vizbee website (opens in a new tab) for an overview of the above-mentioned benefits of Vizbee Continuity. You can also see a complete list of Vizbee’s supported devices.

Architecture

Continuity operates in the “control plane” and not the “data plane”. This means that Continuity does not stream the video from the mobile app to the TV. Instead, Continuity causes the mobile app to instruct the TV device and the TV app to fetch the video from your existing CDN. Further, Continuity typically will invoke the playback of the stream in your own native TV app (if you have one). Once video playback starts, you can turn off your mobile phone and also control the video simultaneously with your existing TV remote. Hence, Continuity is compatible with all your existing features of video streaming, including DRM, Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI), video quality analytics, etc.

Continuity uses multicast technologies to automatically sense various streaming devices and smart TVs on the local network. Once detected, Continuity has built-in intelligence to identify the streaming device and invoke the right protocol to automatically install apps, launch apps, and connect with the apps to initiate and control video playback.

Components

There are three core components of the Vizbee Continuity platform:

1. Vizbee Sender SDK (also called “Remote” SDK) The Sender SDK is integrated into mobile and tablet apps. There is a different version of the SDK for iOS and Android. The Vizbee SDK is an adjunct to the existing functionality of the mobile app (like UI, DRM, analytics, etc.) and adds unique casting capabilities without interfering with mobile video playback and related features.

2. Vizbee Receiver SDK (also called “Screen” SDK)
   The Receiver SDK is integrated into apps released onto streaming boxes and smart TVs. There is a separate version of the Receiver SDK for Roku, FireTV, Smart TVs, etc.

3. Vizbee Cloud
   The Sender and Receiver SDKs can discover and connect to each other directly on a local network. The SDKs also connect to the Vizbee Cloud. The core service present in the Vizbee Cloud is the Configuration Service that determines the types of devices a Sender SDK is allowed to cast to and also the type of apps launched on the receiver devices.

Deployment

Vizbee Continuity has been designed to enable flexible, quick, and incremental deployments. There are a few simple steps to draft your Continuity deployment plan:

1. Finalize target devices and receiver apps for initial deployment
   Review the list of supported devices and finalize the set of target devices and corresponding receiver apps based on your business requirements.

2. Use the Configuration Service to enable incremental deployments
   Vizbee’s Configuration Service enables incremental deployments. You can start with a small focused deployment with initial casting to only, say, Chromecast and Roku. You can then enable casting to more devices like Fire TV, Samsung TV, etc. at a later point when your team completes the Receiver SDK integration into corresponding receiver apps. Note that no changes are required to mobile app integration to enhance the casting to more devices. You only need to simply make updates to the Configuration Service.

3. Integrate the Sender and Receiver SDKs into your apps
   Review the design concepts of Sender and Receiver SDKs to get a broad understanding of the APIs. There are separate guides for Sender Integration and Receiver Integration that provide detailed notes on how to integrate the SDKs into various apps.